On December 7, 1941, following the Japanese attack on the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war. From that point on, it was a world war.
At the same time, persecution intensified and spread: in France, Nazi propaganda denounced the perpetrators of anti-German attacks as “Jews” and “agents in the pay of Anglo-Saxon and Russian intelligence.” On December 12, 1941, German and French police carried out a new roundup, known as the “roundup of prominent figures,” which, for the first time, targeted Jews with French citizenship: 743 Jews were arrested and transferred to the Compiègne-Royallieu camp before being deported to Auschwitz in March 1942.
This would be the first convoy of French Jews bound for extermination. Nazism was at work on every level: according to a German press release, the plan to deport “a large number of Jewish-Bolshevik criminal elements” to the East had been set in motion.
On December 15, 1941, 95 hostages (including 53 Jews, mainly from the Drancy camp) were executed near Paris at Mont-Valérien and in the provinces, at Caen, Fontevraud, and Châteaubriant. This was the highest number ever executed in a single day.
According to the Nazis and the Vichy government, the Resistance was made up of “undesirables”: Jews, communists, and foreigners, who together accounted for more than half of those executed by firing squad. By targeting them, the Vichy regime and the occupying forces sought to sever their ties with the French population once and for all.
All those involved in the clandestine Communist Jewish press were specifically targeted by the Nazis: Israël (Moshe) Bursztyn, the former manager of the Naïe Presse, one of the 95 hostages taken on December 15, 1941, was executed at Mont-Valérien, and Rudolf Zeiler, the printer of Unzer Wort (Our Word), who had been arrested in October, was shot there on December 19. The following year, editors Mounié Nadler and Joseph Bursztyn were also shot.
Other editors and co-editors of the newspaper would be arrested and die in deportation camps, including Aron Skrobek (known as David Kutner), Ephraïm Lipcer, Wowek Cyrzyk, and numerous distributors and members of the technical staff*.
In the face of this repression, the clandestine Jewish branch of the M.O.I. in Paris grew stronger, and more and more Jews took part in Resistance activities.
The political objective of the Jewish section is now to intensify the struggle against the Occupier while bringing Jewish workers of immigrant origin closer to French workers.
Between September 1941 and October 1942, more than 835 hostages were executed. The occupying forces and Pétain worked to instill a sense of fear among the French people.
On the contrary, these executions fueled hatred toward the Nazis and the Vichy government. They would bring new fighters into the Resistance.
*Technical unit: an organization responsible for carrying out the logistical tasks necessary for the political and military Resistance (printing, communications, “safe houses,” false papers).
